written in the 2nd century AD by Lucius Apuleius Madaurencis in his book "Metamorphosis" also known as " The Golden Ass", the story tells the obstacles that Eros ( Love ) and Psyche ( soul ) have to face till their sacred union is completed .
Many interpretations and readings can be made of this beautiful tale , but the one that interests me the most is the paradox of this union .
Can Eros and Psyche not live without each other as the myth says or one needs more the existence of the other to sustain its own existence ?
Can we love without a soul ? can the soul exist without love ?
To answer that we have to first be aware of who Eros really is .
in Greek Mythology Eros is the son of Aphrodite , Goddess of Love with Ares God of War.
however Hesiod in his "Theogony " considers him son of Chaos, a primordial God .
There he describes him as being very beautiful and irresistible which leads him to abandon his good judgement . Hesiod gives him a unifying role , contributing to the passage of Chaos to Cosmos ( Order ).
Plato however in his book Symposium , describes Eros in a very negative manner .
To him Eros depicted as being poor, homeless , always barefoot and sleeping on the floor. Plato describes him also has seeking constantly for beautiful bodies , hunting them with mischiefs, intrigues and lies . He is a philosopher , a sophist , making potent potions . Its nature is neither mortal or immortal and in one day when everything turns right to him , on the next day he will die just to return again on the next day . But everything he gets he loses quickly .
This very negative view that Plato has of Eros will set the way thinkers and mystics will look upon sensual love for centuries to come .
There will be a suspicion concerning the poisonous nature of Love and an attempt to protect the purity of the Soul from it .
Not only these thinkers and mystics thought that the Soul could live without Love , but it was preferably to do so.
Sensual love with its obvious sexual connotations was seen as something disruptive and corruptive to the Soul. It drowned the soul into stormy waters , clogging one`s judgement .
Eros became forever seen as a reminder to man that he was an angel with clay feet unable to higher realms unless only his idealism and mysticism .
Strange creatures we are that so fiercely try to conceal our animalhood aspiring to a divinity that we never possessed .
Why this need to reject nature ? Reject the living breathing biology in us? Religion and Morality makes us sick and feeble like Nietzsche said. Shame is nothing but a moral category , artificial and abstract like all morality is. Embrace the Eros in us and let us invite us Psyche to celebrate this great, magical feast called LIFE .
